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Airmail: The allure regarding the air letter that is long-distance .

The young woman behind the desk at my local post office looked bewildered. “I think we’ve got some somewhere”, she mumbled before returning with a pile of dusty envelopes. “Nobody really asks of these any more,” she admitted.

A century ago this month the world’s very first air mail service began

Passed under the counter and into my hand was an example of a mode of communication that features all but vanished. Compliment of Skype, texts and e-mails, there’s little need anymore when it comes to small pale blue envelopes aided by the diagonal red and blue stripes across the border, extra thin blue writing paper and great number of stamps and post marks that constitutes an air mail letter. Dr. Richard Saundry, editor for the British Air Mail Society Journal, believes that we’re at risk of losing something both romantic and powerful.

“I think it is very regrettable that nobody appears to use air mail any more”, he informs me. “We are now living in a very lazy age now the other has been lost. There’s a huge thrill and excitement, and some sort of romance in receiving an air mail letter through the opposite side around the globe in your door mat. The world-wide-web just can’t replace that.”

A hundred years ago this month the world’s very air that is first service began. Flying from Allahabad, near Delhi, only seven years following the Wright brothers made their first forays in to the air, the plane, flown by a French pilot called Henri Pequet, travelled 15 miles to Naini. On board were six and a half thousand letters including one published by Motilal Nehru, father of the first president of independent India.

The UK wasn’t far behind with the air that is first flight lifting off from Hendon to Windsor later that year. The speed why these pioneers succeeded in reaching to have letters around the globe is seldom beaten today. Richard during the fresh air Mail Society told me of a letter he possesses which was sent from Buenos Aires to China in 1938. The letter arrived in 13 days- a feat that could be hard to match now without write my paper paying reasonably limited to a courier company that is private.

As a young child I thought there is nothing more exciting than getting letters that are occasional my aunt in South Africa. Covered in strange stamps and smudged post marks, the letter that is creased contain pages of dense hand writing describing life in Cape Town within the latter many years of apartheid. It seemed almost like getting a letter that is personal an esteemed foreign correspondent plus the gravitas of receiving these letters was so great that, twenty years on, I still possess them. I still receive news it’s by e-mail, the tone is scrappy and, in my hastily returned missives, a huge degree of effort and attempt at phrasing and sentence structure is missing from her, but these days.

“Getting an air mail letter was a great deal a lot better than a phone call”, admits Kate Hunter, a ward that is retired in Nottingham, whose husband had a long career in the oil industry.

“He was away for months at a time during the 1970’s and I also always found the phone that is rushed he could occasionally make if you ask me really unsatisfying”, she recalled for me.

“What i must say i loved were the days when an air mail letter from Kuwait or Dubai would slide through the letter box. It absolutely was only in writing that my hubby really was able to express his feelings, tell me simply how much he had been missing me and give me a much truer idea of what he was going right through. There’s an honesty to a tactile hand written letter which you can’t get in a phone call or an e-mail. I would personally want to obtain the letter, curl up regarding the sofa with a cup of tea and lose myself in just the handwriting for a time. Although the letters might take ages to reach, I somehow felt closer to him whilst holding an air mail letter we spoke from the phone. than I ever did when”

With my very own air mail envelopes in hand, i got to my home to realise I’d made a serious error. I desired to publish, but to whom? I experienced e-mail addresses for my friends based everywhere from Montevideo to Monaco but I found i did son’t have just one postal address for any of them anymore. What exactly did I do? No choice was had by me apart from to e-mail my buddies asking with their address.

Five days later, and I still haven’t got around to writing anything- preferring to possess a ‘Skype’ chat instead. Maybe Richard was right about us staying in a lazy age. One hundred years from now, will our descendents have any idea about the allure of a letter of love, heartache or politics that has travelled around the world by plane?